Thursday, 5 September 2013

Ecce Humanoid: The Digested Review

Mark Lawrence’s second novel, King of Thorns, is a Nietzschean journey through otherwise familiar territory. Lauded for its ‘grim dark’ appeal and youthful anti-hero, it is more a slog through typical misogyny, casual racism, and oodles of fantasy violence in an post-apocalyptic setting that hasn’t progressed much from earlier examples in the genre. It is singular mostly, in its extreme toxicity towards women and its queasy relationship with underage female sexuality and constant appeals to gamesmanship. Where it dares, it dares mildly, mostly by increasing the level of familiar tropes from background radiation to a lethal dose.